


All Grumpy on the Northern Front

by audreycritter



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Gift Fic, Jason and Damian brother bonding, Minimal language considering Jason, Possibly rushed ending, except bonding over injury and survival, i cannot write short stories you guys, injured!fic, some gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-26
Updated: 2016-11-26
Packaged: 2018-09-02 06:24:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8654122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreycritter/pseuds/audreycritter
Summary: Jason was just trying to follow a lead. But one lead led to another and now he's having the stupidest mistake of a week. At least there might be a silver lining. Who knew the best part of his week would end up being the Demonbird?





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DawnsEternalLight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DawnsEternalLight/gifts).



> Don't own, just borrowing. 
> 
> Written as a birthday gift for Dawn. :)

This was all wrong. 

It was all wrong from the very beginning.

**Day 1**

For one thing, Damian had no business tracking the weapons dealer. It was a bit out of his league, to go solo on something this big. Jason could handle something like this alone, but Damian was still just a kid. He needed some kind of supervision. 

This seemed to be such a basic fact that Jason had wasted half an hour searching for Bruce or Dick in Naples after spotting Damian on the street. Damian was shadowing Jason’s lead, so he knew the kid had to be working the same angle of the same case. He was just shocked to realize he was actually alone. So, following his lead had also become following Damian.

Damian didn’t notice him, but Jason didn’t chalk this up to excessive distraction. Damian was good, but so was Jason. He’d spent years training and working with Bruce, after all.

So it wasn’t working together. It wasn’t even, exactly, keeping an eye on Damian (though the thought occurred to him that he probably should, at least for Dick’s sake if nothing else). It was more like coasting on the interstate, riding the undertow of a semi to save on gas with your own engine in neutral.

It saved energy. 

And frick, but Jason was tired. 

**Day 4**

It was stupid, that’s what it was. It was the most dumbass, infuriating kind of stupid.

The mid-level deals manager led them north into Russia, and then further north into the taiga by plane. Damian had hidden somewhere in the cockpit somehow. Jason had hidden in the cargo hold and nearly frozen to death. By his best guess, they were…north. 

He was gonna need to track Damian home, too. There was no sense of location after the dark cold of the cargo hold except boreal forest. The summer temperature of fifty-two degrees, by Jason’s best guess, felt practically tropical when he did finally deem it safe to turn off the oxygen converter in his mask and climb out of the plane.

Jason scanned the landscape and bolted for cover, not bothering to look first for Damian. The kid had gotten himself this far, he could handle himself for a bit longer. Jason was more concerned in the moment with the man the mid-level dealer was meeting with in front of a small, corrugated metal shack.

Unfortunately, Jason managed to pick the one decent hiding spot that had also appealed to Damian and his four day track record of going unnoticed was broken when he dropped over the bluff nearly on top of the boy, who greeted him with an indignant hiss.

“What are you doing here?” Damian snarled under his breath. 

“Hi to you, too, Bat-breath,” Jason answered, burying his irritation. “Shut up and let’s find out what these guys are up to.”

“You _cannot_ be here,” Damian insisted, punching Jason’s arm, hard. It actually hurt and they were losing time to eavesdrop, so Jason’s suppressed annoyance surged up to the top.

“Don’t effin hit me,” Jason growled. “I’ve been watching your ass for four days and this is just as much my case.”

“You don’t frighten me,” Damian hissed back at him. “But you’re an idiot if you don’t–”

Damian was cut off by a shadow across the slope, a figure towering above them. Jason had a gun in his hand within the next breath, while Damian flipped up over the bank. His green combat boot made contact with something and Jason heard the crunch as he leveled the gun.

Then his whole arm went limp.

His whole _body_ went limp. 

Limp and full of furious pain. 

He was on the ground on the damp forest floor, pine needles pricking his unshaven face while he gasped. There was something in his back, something stuck right in the gap between shoulder and neck. He couldn’t move his head to see it or lift his hand to feel for it. Whatever it was went straight through or under his leather jacket.

Damian was shouting and fighting above him but it didn’t sound like the kid was getting very far.

“Enough,” a deep voice said, the accent faintly Russian– it was polished though, and clipped. 

Jason’s helmet was wrenched off and thrown to the side. Then the thing in his shoulder was jerked out with no warning and Jason inhaled sharply, groaned; his chest wanted to shriek but his mouth was working like a fish out of water. There was a foot nudged under his chest and he was roughly rolled over. 

Jason could see the spindly tops of skinny evergreen trees like prickly dark toothpicks against the pale sky, gray with cloud cover. He could see the thin and angular face of a man with combed blond hair and watery blue eyes. The man was narrow all over, every limb, his chest and gut curved inward under his buttoned shirt and vest. He was not wearing a suit jacket and his sleeves were rolled; Jason guessed there was never a jacket to begin with.

His gaze flicked up and to the left and he could see Damian, his throat in the grip of a big meaty hand. The kid was struggling furiously, pulling at the fingers attached to an arm as thick as Damian’s head. The boulder of a man was holding him with his arm fully extended and Damian was fighting as hard as Jason knew he could– his legs hooked around the man’s extended arm and kicking mercilessly at the man’s armpit, but the giant was immovable. 

The skinny man in the tailored vest wiped a stiletto blade on his slacks and then bent over Jason and held the blade over Jason’s heart.

“Enough,” he said again, in his weirdly deep voice. “Or your brother-in-arms breathes his last.”

Jason waited to die. There was no way the kid would–

Damian had a small knife of his own in his hand now, ready to stab the man holding him, but he froze and after a moment of hesitation, dropped it and stopped fighting, his legs dangling beneath him. 

“Good boy,” the thin man said. He stepped over Jason and, with the stiletto blade, pricked Damian’s hand. Damian’s body went slack in the chokehold and he was unceremoniously dropped onto the ground near Jason.

“I’m sparing you for Talia,” the man said toward Damian’s limp form. He used his foot to nudge him down the hill so he was pressed next to Jason. Damian’s eyes caught Jason’s and they were full of fury and fear.

“Sparing you this much, anyway. Good luck. Genya? Disarm and disrobe them, if you please.”

“My pleasure,” the giant said lightly. He said something else in Russian that Jason didn’t catch but Damian’s pupils widened. 

“No,” the thinner man said with a chuckle that matched his deep voice. “I don’t think that will be necessary. I do want to at least _attempt_ to stay in Talia’s good graces. She’s an understanding woman– she will likely overlook his incapacitation. I’m less certain it will remain true if we cripple him.”

The giant man was already bent over Jason, wrenching his jacket off while Jason was helpless to protest or fight. He struggled to, but couldn’t even manage to move a finger. 

Within minutes, he and Damian were both stripped to underwear on the forest floor, all their weapons in a pile next to a heap of clothing.

“Bring the weapons, leave the– you know, actually, just bring it all,” the thin man said, glancing in the direction of the clearing. Jason wondered what has happened to the mid-level guy or his pilot; maybe they were smoking and watching or pretending not to notice. He hadn’t heard a plane take off.

The giant Genya grunted in return and scooped it all– clothes, knives, guns, belts– all into his arms and stomped off. The thin man followed him and a few moments later, Jason did hear the plane engine start up. It sputtered down the short runway a while after that and was gone.

Jason lost track of time lying there. His shoulder stung and then ached and throbbed. He stopped trying to move after the first ten minutes and he just waited. He didn’t know what he was waiting for, what kind of sign he wanted, but he waited through being hungry and cold and it must have been late afternoon, the gray sky starting to darken, when he looked at Damian and swore inside.

He’d been occasionally letting his gaze drift that way to check on him, but the kid always looked so angry and poisonous that Jason didn’t linger long. But now the brat’s lips were starting to turn faint blue. It was still in the fifties and they were each in nothing but boxers; Jason himself knew he’d be shivering by this point if he could–

He _did_ shiver. His hand moved. He felt it. 

Jason tried again, this time to lift an arm. It raised in the air obediently, sending bolts of pain through his shoulder and neck, and he cussed loudly. Damian lifted his head at that and tried to roll over, away from Jason. He made it halfway while Jason shoved himself into a sitting position with the arm opposite his stab wound. The kid was shaking now. Jason’s shivering was more pronounced than a moment ago, but control was seeping back into his limbs. 

He flopped over and dragged his legs up beneath him and staggered to his feet. He took a minute to find his balance and his bearings, wincing at the pain in his back. And now that he could, he reached a hand over his shoulder and felt the wound. It was nearly too tender to touch directly and it was sticky with blood and bits of pine needle and dirt.

The temperature was dropping and they had nothing. Even his boots were gone. 

He looked down at his side. Damian had managed to sit up and while Jason was watching, he tried and failed to stand. 

Jason took a deep breath and bent over and scooped the kid up into his arms. Damian pushed at his chest and Jason tightened his grip and shook him, once.

“Stop,” he ordered. “My arms already feel like dadgum jelly. We gotta get inside.”

There was that shed, the metal one. It was something. 

Damian pushed away from him again and Jason almost dropped him. He squeezed hard and shook him again, snapping.

“_Stop it_. Good _night_ , Demonbird. You can hate me all you want once we get warmed up.”

Damian stopped fighting and slumped against Jason’s chest. Jason held him close, willing his body to transfer heat. He started walking, one foot in front of the other one forced step at a time. 

In the clearing, the guy Jason had been tracking and the plane’s pilot were sprawled across the summer grass. The growth near them was brown with old blood and their eyes were blank and dry. He went right past them, making a mental note to search them for clothes or supplies.

He let Damian drop to his own feet by the shed door and Jason tried once to force it open with his shoulder, an involuntary cry wrenching out of him when the door didn’t give and it compressed the wound on his back.

“Stand back, Todd,” Damian said in a stern tone; his authority was shaken by his chattering teeth and the high pitch of his young voice. But Jason, swearing again, stepped back and let the kid kick the locked door open.

Despite the run-down exterior, the interior of the shed was furnished like a basic cabin. There were bunk bed cots, a small table and two chairs, a narrow wardrobe, a small cook stove and a single cabinet of dishes and canned goods. There was a desk with a radio and a white box labeled as a first aid kit and a little wood-burning furnace. 

Damian went straight for the radio and flicked the power switch, while Jason leaned against the door frame.

“Leave it,” he said, when the radio didn’t work and Damian was starting to growl. “We can figure it out after we warm up.”

Jason pulled a wool blanket off the bottom cot and threw it at the kid. Damian wrapped it around his shoulders and sat in one of the chairs, a sulky look on his face. 

In the wardrobe, Jason found a few musty jumpsuits with a Russian space program symbol on the breast pockets. They had no other identifying marks like names or ranks. There were nine small enough for Damian but at least one was big enough for Jason. He shook it out, dust filling the air. He coughed in the cloud and pulled it on, the rough material scraping against his bare, chilled skin.

“Put this on,” he ordered, tossing the smallest of the suits toward Damian’s head. The kid caught it with a disgusted scowl and picked a long-dead moth cocoon off. There were holes in one sleeve, along the wrist.

“I prefer the blanket,” Damian said through clacking teeth.

“Roll the sleeves and legs,” Jason said sharply. “And stop your damn whining. You need both. I’m going to find wood.”

Damian didn’t argue anymore, but he opened his mouth once and then snapped it shut.

Jason zipped up the jumpsuit and went outside into the twilight. There was a small pile of rotting wood behind the shed and he picked through it for the driest pieces. He didn’t have the energy to go any further to hunt for material. 

When he turned with a few pieces stacked on his good arm, Damian was there in his suit with bulkily rolled cuffs, kicking through the ground cover for twigs and sticks. Jason was too cold and drained to attempt to order him back inside, so they went in together a few minutes later.

There was an old pack of matches on top of the furnace and it took Jason three attempts to get one to light the kindling. Damian shoved some wadded papers toward him on the third attempt.

“From a journal by the radio,” the kid said. “I read them, they’re nothing.”

Jason accepted them and shoved them under the wood. They sat with blankets in front of the growing fire for a long time without speaking. When Damian did speak, his voice was steady again and Jason’s own limbs were thoroughly warmed again. It wasn’t really that cold outside; he guessed it had dropped to somewhere in the forties, and with clothes and blankets and shelter and fire they were well out of danger. At least on the count of cold, for now.

“Your interference was disastrous today,” Damian spat out.

“You didn’t let him kill me,” Jason said, finally speaking the thing that had been flopping around in his brain for hours. “You could have and you didn’t.”

“Tt,” Damian uttered in response to this.

“Who was he?” Jason asked. “It’s not _your_ case, by the way. I’ve been tracking these guys for over a fricking month without a name. But you knew who would be here, didn’t you?”

Damian glared at the furnace and let the blanket fall off his shoulders.

“I didn’t,” he admitted after a long silence. “Or I would have been better prepared. His name is Livy and he is one of my grandfather’s northern European operatives. I do not understand what any of this has to do with you.”

“There have been rumors of a big weapons moving in through my lead for weeks. I was following him and found you, big whoop-de-do. You were in _my_ way, not the other way around. Where the hell does Bruce think you are? He didn’t send you out _alone_ did he?”

Jason tossed his own blanket toward a cot with his good arm. His other arm was growing stiff, fire lacing down his neck and back and along the shoulder. Damian must have noticed him wincing because the boy stood and found the first aid kit. He set it on the emptied chair and opened it before he spoke. The kit had gauze and old bandages and not much else.

“Father thinks I am at a summer camp with Jon Kent. And he will believe so for another few days if Jon can keep his mouth shut.”

“Unfortunate for both of us, then,” Jason muttered. 

Damian looked around the small shed.

“It is,” he agreed. He stood and examined the tiny cabinet next to the gas cookstove. “These cans have all burst or rusted through. There is vodka, however.”

“Figures,” Jason sighed. “Bring it over here.”

“I do not think–”

“You’re going to clean my shoulder with it,” Jason said. “And then we gotta figure out that radio or how to get out of here. How far do you figure we are from a town?”

“It is at least ninety kilometers,” Damian said, unscrewing the cap on the glass bottle of alcohol.

Jason unzipped the jumpsuit and tugged it off his upper body. 

“I need to boil some water,” Damian said from behind him. 

“Just pour it on. I don’t even know where we could get any.”

“There’s a pump outside,” Damian said, his words dripping with derision. 

“Do you have a bottle of water sitting around to prime it with?” Jason spun to scowl at him. “And don’t give me that tone, Demonbird. You got us into this as much as I did. Maybe more. And what the hell were we stabbed with, anyway? I get the feeling you’re _still_ keeping secrets after throwing a tantrum and getting us noticed. I followed you for _four_ days without you or anyone noticing and you blew it in five minutes.”

Damian’s furious expression told Jason he had hit home with his words. The boy was shaking again and not from cold this time. And then, right in front of him, the kid’s whole demeanor changed. He just wilted, his frame sagging and his eyes downcast.

“It wasn’t big weapons,” Damian said miserably. “It was only one weapon. The dagger is a cursed one and used to be in my grandfather’s possession. It was intended to be enroute to Gotham to be used, presumably against Father. Do you understand why I was required to keep this hidden from him? He would underestimate its effectiveness. He _always_ does so with anything magic.”

Jason couldn’t argue this point. He knew it to be indisputably true.

“How long have you known?” he asked, spinning to sit astride the chair. He leaned his arms on the back and frowned at the kid. “And why didn’t you ask Dick for help?”

Damian gave him a look.

“Do you expect me to believe that confiding in Grayson would not have ultimately resulted in him here alone or with Father? If I conveyed the gravity of my concern appropriately, we would not be here but they would likely be dead.”

Jason screwed up one corner of his mouth and nodded.

“Alright. So my guy was gonna take it into Gotham but now he’s dead.”

“No doubt slain when Livy and Genya suspected they had been betrayed. Livy would not hesitate to neutralize a potential threat by death before investigating the noise we had made.”

“_You_ made,” Jason pointed out, unable to help himself. “And now we’re ninety kilometers from any town with no food, no radio, no water, no real clothes.”

“I can fix the radio,” Damian said with surety. He sounded almost hopeful in rejection of Jason’s doir assessment.

“Those log pages you gave me,” Jason said, “they all recorded no contact, didn’t they?”

“Yes,” Damian said slowly, horror eclipsing his face as he realized.

“The whole book says no contact, doesn’t it?” Jason asked. Damian was across the small shed in just four steps, flipping through the book at the desk. Next he picked up the radio and shook it, heavy and bulky as it was. There was a faint rattling inside.

“This place was a jail,” Jason said. “The jumpsuits have no names and there was one of every size. The radio was never fricking real. It was probably used for exercises or pointless exile assignments as punishment.”

Damian swore in Arabic and threw the radio against the wall, where it hit the thin insulation bound to the metal sheeting with a bang before falling to the floor and breaking. It split open to reveal no real radio parts but merely glued down lead weights.

“We’re stuck here for at least tonight,” Jason said in the silence that followed. “Then we can find a stream or creek and follow it down into civilization. It’s too dark to go look for water now and risk getting lost.”

Damian sighed and left the radio in pieces on the floor. He picked up the vodka and Jason braced himself, gritted his teeth. Then he pulled away from the kid, calling when he remembered, 

“Wait. Let’s do your hand first.”

He must be in pretty rough shape, worse than he thought, if he had actually forgotten.

“It’s merely a scratch,” Damian said dismissively. 

“Lemme see it,” Jason said, unwillingly to accept Damian’s assessment. The hand was held out in front of his face in the firelight and it was, sure enough, not more than a scratch or a mild prick. 

“Satisfied?” Damian asked, withdrawing his hand.

“Shit,” Jason exhaled. “He _stabbed_ me. But you were paralyzed, too.”

“All that is necessary, if rumors are to be believed, is for the weapon to break the skin. And current evidence is in support of that hypothesis.”

“And he stabbed me anyway!” Jason exclaimed indignantly. “The fu-” 

He cut himself off and glanced at Damian’s face in the flickering light.

“- _floozy_ ,” Jason amended. 

“Livy is a sociopath,” Damian said casually. “Hold still.”

And then he poured vodka on Jason’s shoulder, right over the wound and the matted mess of blood and forest gunk on his back. 

Jason didn’t have time to properly brace himself again and he shouted in reaction, and broke the top bar of the slatted chair back slamming his hand against it when he roared. If it startled or upset Damian, the kid gave no indication, but quickly set to work scrubbing at the trails of vodka with a jumpsuit he was tearing into strips.

They didn’t speak again until Jason’s shoulder was covered in gauze. The tape wasn’t sticking very well, the glue dried out with age and crackling in Damian’s fingers even as he unrolled it. Jason finally waved the kid’s attempts away and mumbled, “just leave it. I’ll just have to keep it uncovered.”

Damian threw the tape into the first aid box and then hopped onto the top cot. 

“I am going to sleep,” he announced. “We are agreed nothing else can be done until morning?”

“Agreed,” Jason said wearily.

He staggered to the bottom cot and slept.

**Day 5**

Jason woke up hungry and thirsty and sore and probably actually a little fevered. He rolled off the cot and went to the door. The fire had recently been stoked and was burning a healthy red in the furnace.

The chill outside slapped his cheeks and made him shiver– the sun was just beginning to rise. When he closed the door and turned back, Damian was sitting cross legged on the top bunk.

“Ready?” the kid asked.

Jason looked around. He felt like there ought to bed something else they could do to prepare, to get ready. Ninety kilometers would take them at least two days, possibly three, with terrain and their lack of food to consider.

“No,” he said gruffly. “We need to pack.”

They found stiff leather rucksacks at the bottom of the wardrobe and filled them with a blanket each, a cup from the cabinet, and some bandages because why the hell not?

There were three pairs of boots in the wardrobe and Jason put the biggest pair on. They pinched a little but they were literally better than nothing. Damian wadded up pieces of the torn jumpsuit and shoved them in the toes to make his a bit closer to an actual fit. Jason looked down at him, suddenly surprised by how _little_ the kid actually was.

Then they were off, hiking downhill hopefully toward water in the gathering light. Jason kept adjusting the straps to try to avoid irritating his back. He smelled to himself like sour sweat and vodka. 

“Thank you,” Jason forced himself to say as they trampled over the thick undergrowth and seasons worth of fallen leaves and needles. His mouth was incredibly dry and the words felt like cotton batting. “You know, for not letting him just kill me.”

“Father would never forgive me,” Damian said, as if it were obvious.

“Bruce wouldn’t ever have to know,” Jason observed lightly, not certain he should point it out.

“Tt,” Damian said.

After another ten minutes, they found a stream. They exchanged one look, threw caution to the wind, and drank deeply in the dawn light from the cups they had brought. 

“Let me see your shoulder,” Damian ordered, wiping his mouth with one sleeve.

“Not now,” Jason said, wanting to put it off. There wasn’t much they could do if it was infected except get to help as quickly as possible. He glanced at the sky to make sure they were heading south. 

“You should allow me to clean it,” Damian insisted, following him as Jason hiked down the slope along the creek. Jason ignored him. Damian didn’t insist again.

A few minutes of hiking turned into hours of trudging along. Jason’s stomach growled and he could hear Damian’s rumbling behind him but stopping to forage for food would mean wasting time. Hunting, aside from their lack of weapons to consider, would mean taking time to cook. If they pushed hard enough they might be able to make it to–

“Hey, Demon. Where we headed, again?”

“Plesetsk,” Damian answered. “If we are fortunate.”

Jason knew what it felt like to be hungry and he could live with that. And as much as it irked him to remember it, the brat was hardened enough to deal with it, too. So he kept them going as the sun arced it’s way across the sky, stopping only for water and keeping the stops brief.

By the time the sun was setting again and Jason was starting to think about finding shelter, his arm was so stiff and painful he couldn’t move it. He and Damian had hardly spoken all day long. 

“We should set up camp,” Jason said abruptly, stopping and sitting down.

“What about there?” Damian nodded down the stream. Jason looked, cringing at the soreness in his neck. 

There was a small group of buildings a hundred yards further down. They looked old and abandoned and Jason hadn’t even noticed them until Damian pointed them out. 

“Good idea,” Jason said, climbing back to his feet. 

The little hamlet was only four or five buildings and Jason sat on the front steps of one of them while Damian explored the other houses.

“Empty,” he announced succinctly after emerging from the last one. “They were cleaned out entirely. It must have been a planned abandonment.”

“Shiitake mushrooms,” Jason muttered. “Well, it’s somewhere to sleep, at least.”

“I will gather wood before I clean your shoulder,” Damian announced and Jason felt the blood drain from his face. He had a very clear vision of the matchbox, seven matches left inside, sitting on the desk in the shed they’d left ten hours ago.

“Fu— _ngi_ ,” Jason exclaimed angrily. “Did you bring the matches?”

“I assumed you would!” Damian shot back, eyes wide. Then they narrowed and his dark eyebrows gathered into a bunched slant. “That was _idiotic_.”

“Why is it my fault?” Jason demanded, standing. “You got yourself out of summer camp and to Russia alone. I don’t think it’s too much to expect _you_ to remember matches.”

Damian threw his hands in the air and snarled at the sky. He stalked off angrily, stomping on the undergrowth, and didn’t return for several minutes. Jason was about to go look for him when the kid reappeared with a cup of water.

“I am going to clean your shoulder,” Damian said in a low voice. “Now.”

Jason unzipped the suit and sat on the step while Damian tugged it backward. 

“This is infected,” Damian said flatly, dabbing water on it with a torn rag from his bag. 

“No shit, baby Sherlock,” Jason retorted, resisting the urge to flinch away from the kid’s pressing fingers. 

“And it might have been prevented if we’d tended to it sooner,” Damian added.

“Not much,” Jason argued. “Just finish. It’s cold.”

“Tt,” was all Damian said. 

There was no food to make, no energy left to go search for anything, no lamp or fire to light, and they were both exhausted, so when Jason zipped the jumpsuit back up they went inside one of the empty buildings and stretched out on the wooden floor with the wool blankets for cover.

Jason drifted off almost immediately and didn’t wake again until the middle of the night, when it was pitch black and frigid and his stomach was tight with hunger and his limbs were trembling with low-grade fever. He wasn’t sure what it was that woke him at first, and he was still, listening for threats or suspicious noises.

Then he realized that there was something pressed against him and he looked down, his neck complaining at the movement. 

It was Damian, curled against him with his blanket clutched around his shoulders. Jason was struck again by how _small_ he was. Ignoring the ache in his back, Jason twisted a little on the hard floor to pull Damian closer against him. The kid burrowed his head further into Jason’s chest and Jason was certain he _had_ to be asleep, there was no way he was awake and–

“You are fevered,” Damian said very quietly into the blankets.

“Stay close,” Jason said. “It should at least do somebody some good.”

“Tt,” Damian said, but he didn’t try to move away. 

“I’m sorry I forgot the matches, kid,” Jason whispered after another moment. “I’m just effing this whole thing up. We should have looked for food today.”

“I am also sorry,” Damian said, a little stiffly, “that I acted immaturely and attracted Livy’s attention. It was stupid.”

“It’s all stupid,” Jason said quietly. “The fact that you felt like you couldn’t trust anyone to take care of this with you and not lose their fricking heads over it is stupid. I’m sorry.”

Damian curled a bit more tightly against him. Jason wasn’t certain, but he thought he felt the tremor of sniffle from the kid. He wrapped his good arm around him and at some point, fell asleep again.

**Day Six**

Damian argued with the old woman in Russian while Jason hung back a bit, leaning on the staff he’d hacked off a dead and fallen tree. She seemed suspicious of them and their jumpsuits, repeatedly examining the insignia of the patch on Damian’s chest.

When he tramped back from the cleared front yard of the tiny hut, Damian adjusted the position of the rucksack on his shoulder and glared back at the woman.

“Anything useful?” Jason asked, doubting it.

“She said,” Damian spat out, his words thick with irritation, “that she didn’t think we were real. She says she’s not willing to do business with forest spirits. And she wanted to know if the war was over yet.”

“Which war?” Jason asked, startled. 

“I do not know. When I asked, she simply repeated ‘the war.’” 

Damian sounded about as upset as Jason felt.

There was a slammed door and Jason looked toward the hut. The woman had retreated inside but had left a bowl with two rolls in it on the threshold. 

“What are the chances she poisoned those?” Jason asked, tipping his head toward them.

“Minimal,” Damian replied. “She’s likely trying to appease us as forest spirits and convince us to leave her alone.”

“Well, let’s give her what she wants,” Jason said. Damian was at the door in an instant and threw one of the rolls toward him. 

It was coarse and dense, seemingly made with little leavening. Considering how isolated the woman seemed to be, it was likely composed only of ingredients she had gathered or grown herself.

But Jason wasn’t picky, and neither at this point, it seemed, was Damian. Two days without food and hiking close to, by their best mutual guess, fifty kilometers, was bound to make nearly anything seem appetizing. 

They had only been on the move for a hour before finding the woman and it was still early morning. Jason’s whole right side throbbed but he was determined not to slow them down. 

With Damian taking the lead, they were walking again before either of them had finished chewing.

The morning turned into midday and Jason stumbled once or twice when the sun was at its peak in the sky. He thought his fever was climbing but Damian either hadn’t noticed or seemed determined to keep pushing ahead. After a while, Jason knew it had only been two days but it seemed like he had been trudging through the Russian taiga beneath pine trees and summer beeches for weeks, for months. 

“Wait,” Damian said, interrupting his hazy thoughts. The kid veered sharply off course from the stream and jogged into the forest. Jason stopped, swaying on his feet. He was feeling too wrecked to even peer through the tree cover to see what it was that had gotten Damian’s attention.

Then there was the sharp report of metal spring snapping and a brief, gaping silence that felt like a vacuum of noise and then a scream.

It drove the discomfort of his fever and his stiffness from his mind and Jason ran.

Just a few hundred feet from the bank of the stream, Damian was standing beneath a tree that had a paper tacked to it. The paper was fluttering in the breeze and Damian’s naturally warm bronze skin was a cold, drained gray that matched the faintly yellowed paper.

He looked at Jason with wide eyes, his mouth agape. His chest didn’t move to take in or push out air. There was already sweat beading on his brow when Jason got close enough to see and Jason forced out a strangled, half-angry, “What?” when Damian’s shifting gaze dragged his own down.

There was a crude trap, like a bear trap but with longer prongs and messier jointing, closed around Damian’s leg above the boot. Jason swore and dropped to his knees, studying it. 

He looked up at Damian’s face, the kid’s trembling lip, and words poured out of him before he knew if they were true. 

“It’s okay. You’re gonna be fine. It’s okay, okay? I’m gonna get you out of here. You need to take a breath, okay?”

Damian’s eyes were fluttering and Jason reached up to catch him before he toppled all the way over. He lowered him slowly onto his own lap, propping him there like a younger child. It reminded Jason of helping a toddler at Leslie’s clinic put her shoes back on. Something about the comparison made his mostly empty stomach turn and he had to swallow bile.

Now the kid was panting hard, his back moving up and down rapidly against Jason’s chest, and Jason swore again. He put a hand against the kid’s abdomen, another against his forehead; it was like a hug and like restraints at the same time. 

“Hey, hey, Demonbird, I’m gonna–”

“Don’t leave me,” Damian hissed, his tone panicked. “Don’t leave me. I can get it off, I can do it, I can get it. Don’t leave me, just wait.”

“I’m not going to leave you! What the hell?” Jason exploded, his fear and shock bellowing out of him all at once. “Calm down, brat. I’m not gonna leave you.”

And Jason realized he was crying, tears streaming down his face. His shoulder and back hurt so much, and now Damian was hurt, and he was the grownup and there was nothing– he looked around uselessly, helplessly– but chilling summer taiga around them for miles. Except one crazy old woman who thought they were spirits she’d already bought off. 

“Mama, don’t leave,” Damian was saying, he realized, when he looked back down. The boy’s head was pressed hard back against his good shoulder and his eyes were closed. “I can do it, don’t leave.”

Jason considered shaking him to get him to come back to reality, but decided it wasn’t worth the risk of injuring the kid’s leg further. He ignored Damian’s babbling and leaned forward a bit to examine the trap. 

Damian’s leg was seeping dark red blood where two prongs had gone through the skin, but when Jason gingerly pulled the fabric of the jumpsuit to see around the rolled cuffs, he breathed a small sigh of relief. They looked narrow enough that, if nothing else, they hadn’t broken bone– one was through his calf and the other had scraped a gash straight across the kid’s shin. When he tried to tear the fabric away some, Damian whimpered and then slammed his body back against Jason’s chest. 

Jason’s hands slipped and he grabbed Damian’s shoulders instead.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Damian said, sounding upset but more present. “Are they barbed? Todd, are they barbed?”

Jason looked over the visible prongs and didn’t see any barbs on the ends of them. 

“No,” he said. “Listen, kid, I’m gonna open the trap. Okay? Hang on.”

Jason swallowed hard and put one hand on each side of the spring-loaded clamp. 

“It’s gonna be okay,” he said again to Damian. “I swear I’m gonna get you the motherfrick out of here.”

And then he pulled, ignoring the fire that raced up and down his shoulder and back. Damian didn’t scream again but gritted his teeth so hard Jason could have sworn he heard his jaw crack. 

Then the prongs were out and Jason flung the trap away from them and Damian was stiff on his lap. When Jason turned him by pulling the kid around, Damian slumped against him, sobbing. 

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled through his gasps, “I thought the paper could…I’m sorry.”

“Hush,” Jason said, hearing Alfred in his own voice. “Don’t apologize. Holy guacamole, kid.”

He glanced up at the paper, which looked like nothing more than a notice about government land, from what little Russian he knew.

“It’s okay,” he said to the kid. “I’m gonna use the stuff from your bag to wrap your leg and then we’re getting the hell out of here.”

“I can walk,” Damian said, before he could even attempt it. 

“Eff no,” Jason exclaimed. “I’m gonna carry you. Shut your mouth.”

Damian’s bag rested against his hip, the strap still across Damian’s own body. He rummaged in it for the torn bodysuit and bound the seeping leg wounds in it and tied them off.

It was mid-afternoon. It was the warmest it was going to be and temperatures were going to drop soon. There was no way they were making it to Plesetsk today. 

So, when Jason climbed to his feet and pulled Damian up onto his back, biting his lip against the weight on his wound, he wasn’t thinking, _Make it to town,_ he was just thinking _Keep him alive_.

“Your shoulder,” Damian protested after Jason had taken the first few steps back toward the stream.

“Shut up, Demonbird,” Jason snapped.

Damian was quiet.

Jason put one foot in front of the other.

Again. 

And again.

And again.

His fever was climbing, he could feel it in every part of him now, but he wouldn’t let himself stop for water or to take a break. He was afraid if he stopped now he wouldn’t be able to start again.

This was so stupid.

This was all a huge mistake.

Damian talked to him but Jason didn’t process any of it, didn’t register anything said as actual words.

The sun was dipping low when ahead of them through the woods they could make out a field and a light. It wasn’t Plesetsk, but it was a farm. 

Jason made it to the edge of the field with Damian’s head on his shoulder before he staggered again, once, twice, and then collapsed.

He was barely conscious when he heard Damian leaning over him saying, “Todd, I’ll get help. Stay here.”

He was drifting into black when he saw the kid limping away toward the house. 

He was out.

**Day Seven**

Jason came to his senses slowly, the beeping of machines and dripping of fluid filling his head. He felt awful, but there was a warm weight against his side and a soft bed beneath him.

When his eyes opened, he was looking at ceiling. When he turned his head, Bruce was there. The older man was sitting in a plastic chair in slacks and a button-up, his tie loosened around his neck.

Damian was sleeping on the hospital bed next to Jason, his hair damp and clean. 

“They haven’t been able to keep him in his own bed,” Bruce said softly. 

“Where are we?” Jason croaked out, his mouth dry. Bruce offered him some water through a straw and Jason sucked it down, too beaten to refuse. 

“Moscow. We got a call yesterday from the farm you collapsed at. Damian gave them the house number and Alfred was in the kitchen when he answered. It’s a good thing he speaks Russian.”

“Is he okay?” Jason asked, nodding toward Damian. 

“He is. He will be. You both will be,” Bruce said, and it struck Jason just how weary the older man looked. “You scared the hell out of both of us. What happened?”

“It’s a long story,” Jason sighed. “I’ll tell you when we’re back in Gotham.”

Bruce didn’t press for more information and after a moment, across the ravine that had rent through their lives, Damian snored softly in his sleep. And Jason edged over just a little in the bed and looked at Bruce again.

“You look beat,” he said honestly. “Wanna take a nap with us?”

Bruce didn’t move for a moment and then he stood and pulled the tie out of his collar. The bed creaked at them as he settled behind Jason, his arm across both of the boys.

Jason inhaled deeply, the scent of antiseptic and aftershave and pediatric shampoo. 

And it was stupid.

It was all a huge mistake.

It wasn’t over by any means.

But it felt like having a family again.


End file.
